On Heresy and Censorship
A few days ago I posted on this blog and on my Facebook page the statement by Richard Branson explaining why he had overturned the decision by a lower level of management at Virgin Trains not to sell the "Daily Mail" on Virgin Trains onboard shops.
As the one critical comment on this blog was anonymous it cannot be included in the analysis I am about to describe , but the response on my Facebook page was interesting for three reasons beyond the merits of the points made.
1) Almost to a man and woman, the contributors felt the need to insist that Virgin Trains had the right to impose the original ban, something which neither I nor the articles critical of it to which I had linked had challenged at any point, in any way whatsoever.
2) There was an almost perfect correlation between the way the contributors had voted in the EU referendum and how strongly opposed they were to the referendum result and how supportive they were of Virgin Trains' original decision. Without exception "Hard Remainers" who commented were supportive, usually strongly so, of the original ban. "Soft Remainers" who voted Remain but have accepted the result took a more nuanced position. Leave voters who read the post mostly "liked" it and moved on without commenting - which I take to be an endorsement of Richard Branson's decision to reverse the ban. There were one or at the most two Leave voters who commented, and the one person who I know to be a Leave supporter who commented also took a nuanced view, though it started with the words "Basically, everyone is wrong."
3) Practically every person who commented including those who agreed that the ban was a mistake got into a semantic argument over the use of the word "censorship." Virtually all of them were "more royalist than the King" in the sense that they objected to the use, even with qualifications, of the word "censorship" to describe the original decision to drop the Daily Mail even though Richard Branson himself had twice used it and made clear that the wish to avoid being seen as, quote, "censoring what our customers read" had been his primary reason for overturning the original decision.
I think the debate on whether people should read or advertise in newspapers like the Daily Mail and the Sun caught up in a culture war in British and indeed European society (and there is a similar debate in many other societies such as the USA and Canada.)
I am not going to get into a semantic argument over the use of the word "Censorship" - having looked it up in the dictionary I think you can argue either way whether it applies to the original Virgin Trains decision. My problem in arriving in a suitable definition is that if you go for a very precise and narrow definition of the word it will be so limited in what it would catch as to be almost useless, while a broader definition of the term, something like "attempting to suppress the expression by others of an opinion you disapprove of" could potentially catch all manner of things I personally regard as entirely reasonable, as for example if I remove an offensive post about the deceased person from an obituary published on this blog.
Of course, that is hardly the same thing as state censorship because removing an offensive comment from my own blog, timeline or site does not stop the originator from posting it on his or her blog or page. But then Richard Branson could have given the same defence for Virgin Trains not selling the Daily Mail, and was in my humble opinion wise not to do so - not because Virgin should be forced to sell the DM but because the original decision had been presented by VT in a way which as good as admitted that it was an act of censorship.
I do think that some of the attacks on the press from a wide range of political directions, whether it is the Donald Trump "fake news" narrative or similar comments from Corbynistas, and campaigns like "Stop Funding Hate," whether you call it censorship or not, are damaging to and subversive of democracy, and it may have been unfortunate for Virgin Trains that their decision was seen as another example of the same sort of attack.
I think there is a worrying modern tendency on all sides and in many countries to demonise those who express different views which amounts to a modern form of the search for Heresy.
Let's take the reaction of some people to the Canadian academic Jordan Peterson. Let me make clear that I am not endorsing his views, but it is reasonable to describe some of those views as "controversial" and the reaction of many people to him can be illustrated by Cathy Newman's line of questioning in this interview on Channel 4:
He also holds what are seen in some quarters as the "wrong" views on some of the incredibly difficult issues about transgender people and how to speak about them.
There is an article in the Spectator here, called
"Beware the modern day heretic hunters,"
about how another Canadian university treated a junior academic who showed her class a video clip of Jordan Peterson.
I don't think freedom of thought or speech are as safe as we need them to be.
As the one critical comment on this blog was anonymous it cannot be included in the analysis I am about to describe , but the response on my Facebook page was interesting for three reasons beyond the merits of the points made.
1) Almost to a man and woman, the contributors felt the need to insist that Virgin Trains had the right to impose the original ban, something which neither I nor the articles critical of it to which I had linked had challenged at any point, in any way whatsoever.
2) There was an almost perfect correlation between the way the contributors had voted in the EU referendum and how strongly opposed they were to the referendum result and how supportive they were of Virgin Trains' original decision. Without exception "Hard Remainers" who commented were supportive, usually strongly so, of the original ban. "Soft Remainers" who voted Remain but have accepted the result took a more nuanced position. Leave voters who read the post mostly "liked" it and moved on without commenting - which I take to be an endorsement of Richard Branson's decision to reverse the ban. There were one or at the most two Leave voters who commented, and the one person who I know to be a Leave supporter who commented also took a nuanced view, though it started with the words "Basically, everyone is wrong."
3) Practically every person who commented including those who agreed that the ban was a mistake got into a semantic argument over the use of the word "censorship." Virtually all of them were "more royalist than the King" in the sense that they objected to the use, even with qualifications, of the word "censorship" to describe the original decision to drop the Daily Mail even though Richard Branson himself had twice used it and made clear that the wish to avoid being seen as, quote, "censoring what our customers read" had been his primary reason for overturning the original decision.
I think the debate on whether people should read or advertise in newspapers like the Daily Mail and the Sun caught up in a culture war in British and indeed European society (and there is a similar debate in many other societies such as the USA and Canada.)
I am not going to get into a semantic argument over the use of the word "Censorship" - having looked it up in the dictionary I think you can argue either way whether it applies to the original Virgin Trains decision. My problem in arriving in a suitable definition is that if you go for a very precise and narrow definition of the word it will be so limited in what it would catch as to be almost useless, while a broader definition of the term, something like "attempting to suppress the expression by others of an opinion you disapprove of" could potentially catch all manner of things I personally regard as entirely reasonable, as for example if I remove an offensive post about the deceased person from an obituary published on this blog.
Of course, that is hardly the same thing as state censorship because removing an offensive comment from my own blog, timeline or site does not stop the originator from posting it on his or her blog or page. But then Richard Branson could have given the same defence for Virgin Trains not selling the Daily Mail, and was in my humble opinion wise not to do so - not because Virgin should be forced to sell the DM but because the original decision had been presented by VT in a way which as good as admitted that it was an act of censorship.
I do think that some of the attacks on the press from a wide range of political directions, whether it is the Donald Trump "fake news" narrative or similar comments from Corbynistas, and campaigns like "Stop Funding Hate," whether you call it censorship or not, are damaging to and subversive of democracy, and it may have been unfortunate for Virgin Trains that their decision was seen as another example of the same sort of attack.
I think there is a worrying modern tendency on all sides and in many countries to demonise those who express different views which amounts to a modern form of the search for Heresy.
Let's take the reaction of some people to the Canadian academic Jordan Peterson. Let me make clear that I am not endorsing his views, but it is reasonable to describe some of those views as "controversial" and the reaction of many people to him can be illustrated by Cathy Newman's line of questioning in this interview on Channel 4:
He also holds what are seen in some quarters as the "wrong" views on some of the incredibly difficult issues about transgender people and how to speak about them.
There is an article in the Spectator here, called
"Beware the modern day heretic hunters,"
about how another Canadian university treated a junior academic who showed her class a video clip of Jordan Peterson.
I don't think freedom of thought or speech are as safe as we need them to be.
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